The complexity of ‘cruelty-free’: What does it mean for our products?

Many countries, including Canada, have rigorous standards for cosmetics, medicines, food and cleaning products to ensure consumer safety.

Health Canada regulates every cosmetic product and must obey the Food and Drugs Act guidelines, Cosmetic Regulations and the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act. Any product that poses a health risk is taken off the market.

It is important to have these standards for consumer safety. However, it is equally important for consumers to be educated about product testing procedures and have the choice to purchase cruelty-free products.

Unfortunately, some companies utilize animal testing even though Canada’s Food and Drugs Act does not require animal testing to ensure products are safe.

This does not align with cruelty-free principles.

There are several elements that make a company truly cruelty-free. First, they must eliminate all animal testing at each level of product development, including the selection of raw ingredients, so the finalized product is entirely cruelty-free. New ingredients may lead to new animal testing methods, so cruelty-free companies must also ensure that their suppliers obey policies prohibiting animal testing as they take on new ingredients.

To fulfill this requirement, companies claiming to be cruelty-free cannot sell their products in countries that require animal testing for consumer safety, like China.

Whether or not a product is considered cruelty–free if it is not vegan is more of a grey area because non-vegan products can be made using animal byproducts or animal parts while not engaging in standard animal testing methods. For example, silkworms die in the process of obtaining silk but extracting honey from bees does not kill them despite honey still being classified as an animal byproduct.

On the other hand, the brutality that animals experience throughout the animal testing process is not a grey area.

According to Humane Society International, animal testing involves applying physically and psychologically distressing procedures on animals to understand the effectiveness of products and ingredients.

Harmful procedures include forcing chemical exposure through toxicity testing, injection, inhalation and force-feeding and inflicting wounds and burns to evaluate the healing process. Rodents and many other species endure these procedures while experiencing long periods without food and water and being subjected to physical restraint, ear-notching and tail clipping.

Aside from the inherent cruelty, animal testing is also inefficient and inaccurate. A common misconception is that products that use animal testing are more scientifically accurate at detecting harmful substances. However, this is not the case.

According to a study by the Cosmetics Journal, the extrapolation process between animal and human models is not accurate. Animal models differ structurally and physiologically from humans, so the results of testing chemicals on animals may not be the same for humans. In fact, 75 per cent of animal experiments have limitations for predicting human disease outcomes in products.

This debunks another myth about cruelty-free products being unsafe for human consumption because they do not have the certainty that comes with animal testing. On the contrary, cruelty-free products are very safe. The Cosmetics Journal identifies many scientifically proven ways to test products without any animal testing, including silico toxicology, where experts predict toxicity using advanced computation methods. In addition, genotoxicity testing identifies possible human risks in products, such as substances that can cause genetic and DNA mutations.

Given that animal testing has scientific limitations and serious ethical issues, more companies are seeking approval from the Leaping Bunny Program by eliminating animal testing from their product development processes.

The Leaping Bunny Program is operated by the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics and identifies American and Canadian cruelty-free companies based on the Corporate Standard of Compassion for Animals.

There are currently over 2,300 companies that are certified 100 per cent free of animal testing, including Amika, Blend Bunny Cosmetics and Canary Skincare & Apothecary. The Leaping Bunny has a list of companies in alphabetical order on their website.

Consumers should consider purchasing cruelty-free products because it gives cruelty-free businesses more motivation to continue their sustainable efforts.

Businesses that use fewer chemicals and save animals’ lives while developing products give consumers the control to make ethical decisions in their everyday life.

Furthermore, businesses that make cruelty-free products positively impact not only animals and the planet but also consumers of all kinds.

Consumers must continue to support cruelty-free businesses to motivate the business world to help animals rather than work against them.